During the summer of 2018, I took a break from site documentation for the most part. But on a drive down to California and back, I managed to fit in a small and humble attraction that I’d wanted to see for years—Enchanted Forest in Turner, Oregon (just south of Salem).

When they call it a forest, they’re really not kidding. The entire property is extremely (and charmingly) wooded. From this satellite view you can’t see a single structure save for the parking lot. In a sense, the forest is what makes the experience “enchanted” on some level. Unlike most theme parks, you don’t need an earthen berm to block out the rest of the world—the woods and elevation shift uphill take care of it.

Which was interesting to me, because Enchanted Forest is literally right off Interstate 5 as it winds up into Salem, Oregon. Like, yards from the freeway.

Enchanted Forest is the brainchild of one Roger Tofte, a typical American ‘backyard dreamer’ who was inspired by the roadside attractions he saw driving around the country on family vacations in the early 1960s and thought, why not in Oregon? His family was more skeptical. As his wife Mavis later admitted in her book Enchanted Forest and Its Family, “At first, none of us took Roger very seriously. After all, he had started so many other projects that didn’t get off the ground.”

It certainly took long enough, but Roger kept at it and eventually his dream came true. The hillside plot of land along Interstate 5 near Turner was first secured in 1964, and the park finally opened in 1971 after some seven years of intermittent construction.

The core theme of Enchanted Forest—fairy tales—is far from unique. In fact, the park is part of a larger subgenre of such amusement parks that were built all across the United States in the twentieth century, from the famous Children’s Fairyland in Oakland, California (1950) to Storybook Land in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey (1955). With the notable exception of Fairyland (which Walt supposedly visited during his research), most of these parks were established in the aftermath of Disneyland’s runaway success and leveraged fantasy stories that were comfortably in the public domain.

As such, coming after Disneyland, much of the design vernacular of these parks could be construed as somewhat derivative. These hand routed signs of Gothic script are straight out of Fantasyland.

Similarly, the architectural cues are along the lines of the ‘Ye Olde Gingerbread Village’ look, albeit less detailed than at a Disney park.

Storybook Lane

The entire park is constructed on a hillside, and there is somewhat of an assumed (but not strictly prescribed) one-way route—almost like a variation on the Duell Loop. There are a handful of themed areas, the first of which is Storybook Lane.

Immediately through the entry gates and up to the right is the “Coffee Cottage.” This seems like a smart move, as I saw a line of parents eager to fortify themselves for the twisting journey ahead. The building is clearly newer than most of the other structures nearby, but is still rendered with a similar ‘rustic charm.’

What would a fantasy landscape be like without a grand medieval castle?

Although much, much smaller than the Disney version, the technique of forced perspective is still employed. And granted, this is a park for very, very young children; to a toddler, this must look huge.

Although there’s nothing preventing you from wandering through Enchanted Forest in any manner you choose, signs encourage guests to proceed through Storybook Lane first.

One of the most popular tropes at these fairy tale themed parks is Humpty Dumpty. The original large figure was completed in 1968, three years before Enchanted Forest opened, but was damaged and replaced by a new figure in the summer of 2014.

“Mary Had a Little Lamb” makes an appearance further up the path.

And next we have the famous Alice of Lewis Carroll (again thankfully in the public domain).

What surprised me is that the character designs on display don’t resemble the famed John Tenniel illustrations from the first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). Note the look of Alice and the Mad Hatter here.

Rather they look pretty much like the depictions from the 1951 Disney film Alice in Wonderland.

Here’s the Cheshire Cat at Enchanted Forest.

And the Disney film version. I’m curious as to how the Tufte family hasn’t gotten into legal trouble with Disney over this; maybe it’s because they’re a relatively small-time operation.

Following Alice is another story which Disney has adapted, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). The lighting was too low inside the cottage for a good photo, but the characters do not as closely resemble the Disney film. This sign, however, looks just like what you’d find in Fantasyland at a Disney park.

Here at Enchanted Forest, though, you can walk into the Witch’s Head and then ride down a slide.

Just when parents are getting a bit tired, signs point everyone further up the hill.

Tofteville Western Town

Tofteville was constructed for the park’s second season in 1972. This area is basically the Frontierland section of Enchanted Forest, but more a more rustic and dirty version of the Old West motif as seen in the Ghost Town at Knott’s Berry Farm.

The buildings all have an intention wonkiness to them, and the floorboards creek charmingly as you walk along the planked sidewalks.

Because this park was essentially assembled by Roger Tofte’s family and friends, it often feels like the set of a children’s television show on local cable access. Everything is painted simply; doors are windows are from the local hardware store.

But there’s also an attempt on some of the structures to weather and olden them. Here none of the beams are sanded or finished, and the rooflines are covered in thick moss.

The mixture is odd. Again, it’s one part children’s television set, one part roadside attraction, and one part Knott’s Ghost Town.

The earlier pictures make the area seem larger than it is. In this shot you can clearly see how narrow the street is and how short each block runs.

Here’s a trope I’ve seen before—grave markers with humorous rhymes.

Aren’t they cute?

At first I thought Enchanted Forest was riffing on the famous gravestones at the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and other Disney parks.

But then I remembered that this is a tradition you can find at many other parks. I do not know if the graveyard of puns at Knott's Berry Farm predates the original Haunted Mansion (1969), but the Ghost Town at that park certainly does—it’s been evolving since the 1940s.

The Wagon Wheel Opera House appeared to be the most finished structure in Tofteville. Inside was a combination of dining and retail space.

Great examples of hand painted type throughout, like this Clarendon.

Or this Tuscan.

Here is a mixture of slab serif types.

Just like at many other Old West “ghost towns” that I’ve visited, there are some actual antique artifacts on display throughout.

The one end of Tofteville terminates at a red barn.

Walking through, there’s a sign urging you on…

…around the corner to a house which appears to be falling apart. The Haunted House opened during the 1975 season, and, unlike the Disney park Haunted Mansions which opened in 1969 and 1971, ‘looks the part.’

When presented with the original concept art for a haunted house attraction at Disneyland back in the 1950s, Walt famously remarked that he didn’t want the exterior to look scary and run down—he wanted it pristine, like the rest of the park. Marty Sklar quotes him as saying "Don't worry about it. We'll take care of the outside; the ghosts will take care of the inside."

Here at Enchanted Forest, the look is more traditionally decrepit. Curiously, when it came time to design Phantom Manor for Disneyland Paris, the designers chose to also go more spookily obvious, so that the idea of the house being haunted would better telegraph across multiple languages and cultures.

The park’s Haunted House was charming, and also, at times, genuinely scary. As I exited, I noticed some masonry and black wrought ironwork which reminded me of the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland with its New Orleans Square trappings. Coincidence?

Having a log flume ride is a requisite trope for an American theme park, large or small, and Enchanted Forest finally added one in 1997 after many years of in-house development. I found the Big Timber Log Ride to be themed appropriately, and actually quite fun.

Most surprising was the roller coaster element leading to the ride’s finale. After traveling along the hillside in the flume, the logs latch onto a regular chain lift and go into a dive before climbing back to reengage with the flume for one last big drop.

I thought the park’s wordmark as embossed on the front of each log was a nice touch (just like you see at Knott’s Berry Farm).

At the opposite end of Tofteville from the Haunted House is Fort Fearless, which contains attractions like a small shooting gallery.

All the lettering is lovingly hand painted.

From here Enchanted Forest transforms into a series of tightly plotted narrow streets and tunnel overpasses. The effect of spatial compression is comforting, and also drives guests onward, discouraging them from turning back to re-navigate Tofteville back down through Storybook Lane to the park entrance.

There are no signs indicating the streets are one-way only, but the spatial cues are strong. This is how the same area looks facing the opposite direction, towards Tofteville.

Oregon’s Matterhorn

As at many parks I’ve visited, the tunnel moments allow for spatial and visual transitions between different themed areas, much like the zooming iris of a camera in an old movie. Up ahead appears to be a kind of European fantasy landscape; even the hardscape has changed to a cobbled brick-like treatment.

This medieval script clearly indicates I’ve left the Old West behind.

The Ice Mountain Bobsleds opened in 1982, again, after a long gestation period in-house. One luxury of a small, family-owned and operated park is that project can be designed in an iterative fashion for years.

The queue building / ride station is trimmed in light Germanic-Swiss chateau theming.

As for the ride vehicles, I’ve never been in anything quite like this—trains of three pods in which you are completely enclosed in a plexiglass bubble (but with holes for breathing). I felt a bit claustrophobic as we climbed the lift hill, but once the ride got up to speed it was so fun I didn’t think about it again.

Quite obviously, Enchanted Forest is trafficking in the popularity of Disneyland’s classic Matterhorn Bobsleds attraction which has been thrilling and delighting guests since 1959.

I don’t usually post POV ride footage unless the attraction in question is extinct, but the experience of the Ice Mountain Bobsleds is so unique that you really have to “ride” it to understand it.

The logo graphic for the Ice Mountain Bobsleds is unique as well. Stylistically, it strikes me as both dated and timeless all at once. Which shouldn’t be possible, really. Someone obviously had a lot of fun with Corel Draw. I liked it so much I bought the t-shirt in the gift shop.

Old World Village

Continuing along the path after the bobsleds ride, more details of the Old World Village area start to emerge. The bobsleds opened first, and then this themed area followed, opening in two stages during the 1980s. Initially called the “English Village” with a decidedly Shakespearean flavor, the project was broadened to a more pan-European approach (to allow for even more folklore and fairy tales).

Challenge of Mondor was added in 2006, and is the park’s latest attraction. The entrance is tucked off the main path and features a scaled-down “building within a building.” I had to cringe at the attraction title sign, though, which uses the readymade go-to of faux medievalists and renaissance fair designers everywhere—Delphin, designed by Georg Trump in 1951 for the Weber foundry (frequently found online as an early 90s knock-off called “Dauphin”).

The attraction is part of an ever-growing ilk of interactive dark rides; sort of a combination of a shooting gallery experience and a traditional conveyance, like Buzz Lightyear's Space Ranger Spin or Toy Story Midway Mania! at multiple Disney parks.

One review for the Portland Mercury called it a “Dungeons & Dragons Nerdgasm” which seems just about right. The story isn’t based on any existing IP; the park created their own—to help rescue “Ooglies” from “Draco” and his army of dragons. The ride was fun, surprisingly elaborate and detailed for such a (relatively) small budget, and checked all the right fantasy lore boxes.

It Takes a Village

As I walked on, the settings around me became even more village-like. And things felt very familiar…where had I seen all this before?

Well, this portion of the Old World Village area at Enchanted Forest is a near-perfect lift of the small Italian township where Mastro Geppetto has his workshop in Disney’s Pinocchio (1940).

Disney presents the environments of Pinocchio at several of their Magic Kingdom-style parks around the world, and of course because the company’s artists designed the film, the imagineers working on the theme parks have access to a wealth of source material from concept paintings to storyboards.

The original Fantasyland area wasn’t built with this level of cinematic detail in 1955—mostly because Walt simply ran out of money. A medieval fair concept tied to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle was substituted, with banners, flags and bunting—essentially decorated sheds which housed each of the land’s dark rides.

A “New Fantasyland” opened at Disneyland on May 25, 1983 which was more deeply tied to the various animated films represented. Thus the area around Pinocchio’s Daring Journey—a brand new attraction—felt authentic to the movie. This dark ride was developed concurrently for Anaheim’s “New Fantasyland” as well as for Tokyo Disneyland, which opened a month earlier.

Unique to the Tokyo park is a candy store named for Pleasure Island in Pinocchio, which is also rendered in the Italian “Old World Village” style.

The “New Fantasyland” also included a Pinocchio-themed restaurant called Village Haus (which is now the Beauty and the Beast-themed Red Rose Taverne), which was based on the Pinocchio Village Haus at Walt Disney’s World Magic Kingdom (and is still there today).

The most evocative interpretation of the village designs in Pinocchio is at Disneyland Paris. Unlike Disneyland, the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World, and Tokyo Disneyland, the Fantasyland at this park was designed from the start to be deeply stylized in the manner of the represented animated classics.

One of the reasons for this is with audiences drawn primarily from a dozen or more cultures throughout Europe, it was thought that each nationality deserved a distinct ‘slice’ of Fantasyland—England is represented by Peter Pan (1953) and Alice in Wonderland, France proudly claims Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Beauty and the Beast (1991), Italy gets Pinocchio, and so on.

Yet where Enchanted Forest takes the prize for theming is in the immersive nature of their village design. Sure, the detail lavished upon the areas at the Disney parks as seen above far exceeds the fit and finish here at this small mom-and-pop outfit, but I’d argue that the experience—at least spatially—is better than any of those other Pinocchio representations, because you walk through the village in the exact same manner as shown in the film. As a guest, you follow the point of view of the camera.

Here is the guest’s point of view at the Old World Village.

And here is the camera’s POV in the film.

Even architectural details like this second-story bridge passage are in the film…

…right here. The result is an intimacy that none of the other “villages” from Pinocchio at the Disney parks have been able to replicate.

Although the signage all over Enchanted Forest is well executed, the bits and pieces in and around Old World Village are probably the best.

The typefaces are appropriate, and the wood routing work is terrific.

It’s wonderful to see, as the (well designed) signage at the Disney and Universal parks is increasingly rendered in fiberglass.

Sign after sign, and they’re all lovely.

The inclusion of Arthurian icon Merlin indicates we might be leaving Italy.

Walking downward, the Italian vibe of Old World Village (which was Phase II of the project) gives way to a more Shakespearean English flavor (which was Phase I). This view is looking back, up the hill.

Along this final span, the elements are purely Fantasyland castle in styling.

It was disappointing to see this printed sign (with terribly awkward drop shadow) after all those fantastic wood samples. But a “Free Water Show”… what could this be?

As I soon learned, the Fantasy Fountains is perhaps the park’s most famous attraction, and the one remembered the most fondly by adults who saw it as children. This charming water fountain and light show set to music is housed within the Jolly Roger theater which is themed as an English pub. No beer here though, but there are snacks and beverages.

This second phase of the Old World Village opened in 1988, and is generically medieval / English / fantasy / storybook in appearance.

If you’ve been following the park’s loop in a one-way direction clockwise from the start of Storybook Lane, all of this as you return to the entrance is a nice bookending.

Again, there’s nothing to prevent you from walking the park in the opposite direction (counter-clockwise), in which case you’d enter this castle archway and come to the Fantasy Fountains first. But I think the park was designed—with strong spatial cues—to be run in the other direction. I suppose locals mix it up, but as a first-time visitor, I’m glad I followed the “Start at the Castle” sign at the entry to Storybook Lane.

In conclusion, Enchanted Forest is a charming and simple park; inexpensive, quiet, and geared for very young children. The Tofte family has done their absolute best over the years in managing the place and adding well-considered additions as time and money have allowed. It’s amazing to me that with a fraction of the resources, Enchanted Forest offers a more immersive way to relive one of Disney’s most iconic animated films than even the imagineers have been able to do with everything at their disposal.

It might just be true, what’s often said: art thrives on restrictions.